Quote from: John MorrowWhile I think that's a legitimate argument to make, I think you are ignoring two important points.

First, one of the reasons to oppose the democratic election of communists during the Cold War was that the rise of communists to power often meant the end of real democracy.

Jesus Christ, so we have to destroy democracy in order to save it?! That's your argument?

I mean shit, you really don't have a leg to stand on here, Morrow. The moment you overturn a democratic election, whatever you think might be your motives, whatever you've done has not been in support of democracy.

You can't have democracy without the will of the people: in some theoretical country's case, if the majority of the people actually supported an anti-democratic movement, then I would argue that at that time its not only unethical to try to oppose their position but utterly untenable to attempt to impose democracy by force.

Never mind that in Chile's case there was absolutely no substantial indication that Allende was going to subvert the democratic process.

QuoteI think that if you held that referendum now, you might find a plurality that want the Americans to stay for at least a while.  

I think that tells us a lot about the fantasyland you live in.

QuoteThe vast majority of Kurds likely do, as do some of the other ethnic minorities, including a growing number of Sunnis who are starting to recognize the influence of Iran on their country.  

Certainly there might be minority groups or regions within Iraq that support the occupation out of fear of the alternative, and with a solid basis for that fear.  But that has more to do with a whole other kettle of fish: the reality that Iraq is probably unviable as a state and needs to be partitioned.  Certainly Kurdistan (which has been operating more or less autonomously since the time of the first gulf war) has no business being a part of the rest of Iraq, and a strong argument could be made for a continued U.S. presence there, based on (the very credible probability of) ongoing desire on the part of the Kurdish government and people for U.S. protection and support.

QuoteIt took at least 5 years for the United States to officially end their occupation of Japan and the US still has naval and air bases there.  Countries aren't rebuilt in a month.  I know it's difficult for people with a Britney Spears attention span to think about things taking years but that's what it takes to to it right.

Only its been 5 years in Iraq now and things are just about as utterly fucked up as they've ever been there. No real progress has been made because there was never any real, substantial and intelligent plan for creating a viable state (or set of states) out of the ruins of a post-war Iraq; the whole plan for the start was for a long term occupation with a puppet government and selling off every last Iraqi resource to American corporations.

Neocons love the comparison to post-war Germany or Japan, but conveniently ignore the key differences in how rebuilding in those countries was actually designed to rebuild things, and the huge differences in how the U.S. invested in the creation of strong autonomous and democratic states in those countries.

RPGPundit

Quote from: John MorrowWhile they were certainly proxy wars, the current conflict in Iraq is also a proxy war of sorts against terrorists, Iran, and Syria.  

Please.  Before the US invasion, there was no significant Al Qaeda presence in Iraq, and Iran was probably the only country Hussein hated more than the U.S.

QuoteThe regional power, intent on becoming a nuclear power, that will take over is Iran.  And, yes, both Iran and Iraq posed and still post a threat to American allies and interests in the region, as the invasion of Kuwait illustrated.  There is also the possibility of Taliban-style radicals (perhaps Shiite rather than Sunni) taking over and need I remind you that the Taliban provided the based of operations from which Al Qaeda trained and exported terrorism?

Again, though, those are only real possibilities, either of them, because of the US invasion in the first place.  So your basic argument here is: "we have to stay in Iraq for a hundred years because we fucked up so badly that if we leave now, Iraq will quickly join our enemies".  That's a sterling moral highground you've got going, there.

QuoteWhat are we exploiting that's worth the billions we are spending to remain there?  

Again, that's only by virtue of the fact that the current administration is so utterly incompetent that they can't even manage to succeed in their own crapulent motives.  The whole neocon plan was that "the oil will pay for the war". The fact that they failed to make it profitable doesn't annul the real motivations for it in the first place.

QuoteLet's see what Chavez does if he loses an election.  Do you think he'll quietly give up power?

He lost the referendum and ended up having to accept it (albeit reluctantly according to some sources).  The fact is that WHEN someone subverts democracy (as in the case of Mugabe), then you have a justification of some kind for foreign powers to intervene, though again it must depend on the will of the native population to overcome it.
But the idea that the United States should seek to subvert a standing democracy based on the possibility that the government in power might end up doing it anyways, or worse, that they will simply enact policies not to the United States' liking, is utterly unjustifiable.

QuoteUh, the Americans obliterated two Japanese cities with atomic bombs and typically killed more Japanese civilians in a single night of fire bombings on a Japanese city than Pinochet killed in his 20 years in power.  The United States bombed many Japanese cities, including much of Tokyo, flat.  That it happened before the end of the war is as irrelevant as making a distinction between the destruction the US caused invading Iraq or in the decade previously during and after the first Gulf War and the destruction that's happened since.  To the civilians, it doesn't make a lot of difference.  

It makes a pretty fucking huge difference in how you act after the war is over as an occupying power.
The fact is, the Iraqi people DID for the most part cheer the fall of Saddam; the notion that "the American troops will be welcomed as liberators" was not entirely illogical; its just that they forgot to subsequently act as liberators, and turned out to be just as brutal oppressors as Saddam ever was, while (amazingly) turning out to be more incompetent as governors than Saddam was.
The Iraqi people initially cheered the American conquest (at the very beginning) because they assumed that after the war, the United States would make a real effort to improve their lot, and things would get better for them both in terms of standard of living and personal freedoms than it was under Saddam. Instead, they lost their water and electricity and security, while the tortures and night-time arrests continued as before.

QuoteTrue, but why was Kissinger saying that?  What did it mean for a country to elect communists and why would they do so?  Please note that I'm not agreeing with every case in which America made that choice for another country but I think it's entirely possible to oppose the democratic election of communists in the short-term in order to promote democracy in the long term.  Chile is, after all, a democracy today, is it not?  So is El Salvador, right?  And who dragged the Sandinistas kicking and screaming to hold elections and respect the results?

In both Chile and El Salvador's case, democracy was restored as a result of local popular will mixed with the incompetence of the governing regime making the ongoing state of the regime untenable. That, plus the fact that the US administration then in power no longer propped up the dictatorship.
To suggest that it was somehow the plan all along to restore democracy in those and other south american countries, when the US through Plan Condor systematically overthrew pretty well every democratic country and plunged the entire continent into a roughly decade-long dark age of dictatorships from coast to coast is just patently absurd revisionism.

QuoteEven if I agree for the sake of argument that invading Iraq did more harm than good and shouldn't have been done, we can't take back the invasion and leaving abruptly without regard for the consequences would only add another wrong on top of it.

The problem is that you propose no solution that would show an eventual restoration of truly independent democracy in Iraq apart from the apparent plan of "keep occupying the fuck out of them until the stupid bastards magically start to like us". That's not a solution.

You like to talk about the excluded middle: it seems to me that this is the whole deal with the Neocons: Having a withdrawl plan is admitting defeat so the only alternative MUST be to continue with things exactly as they are and plan to maintain a semi-permanent occupation there for an unlimited time. That's not an answer, that's the stupidity of bashing your head against the same wall over and over again.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jhkimThe "what if" game is always tricky.  For example, you argue that if we (the U.S.) had stayed in the Vietnam War, things would have been better for the Vietnamese and us than what happened in real history.  

Remember that in the hearts of many American Conservatives, Iraq was seen as the opportunity to get a "do-over" on the humiliating "defeat" that they feel was Vietnam.  It was seen as their chance to "prove" something to all those dirty hippies who's "fault" it was that Vietnam was such a disaster and they ended up "losing" American society too: in their bizzare fantasies, if they could "win" Iraq, everyone would now agree that the hippies were wrong, and we'd get to all go back in time (With Dubya as a kind of Superman, reversing the rotation of the Earth) and suddenly all those nasty "changes" to american society would be undone.  To have to pull out of Iraq too is so unthinkable to them because that would mean that all their little conspiracy theories about why they lost in Vietnam are so much bullshit, and they'd now have TWO fuckups on their backs.

Remember, before the Iraq invasion, the standard US-Republican's fairytale about Vietnam was "if we'd just stayed a little longer we'd have been SURE to win". Its unsurprising that this is the basis of their entire strategy in this current war.

Saying that things got worse after we pulled out is deceptive, since we don't randomly pull out when things are getting better.  The issue is the hypothetical of what would have happened if we hadn't pulled out.  It's not an unreasonable opinion regarding Vietnam -- I can't offhand refute it, but it isn't a fact.  

QuoteConversely, (2) I don't think you or other conservatives are arguing "every U.S. invasion was always justified and good".  

Oh, I think that many, MANY U.S. conservatives argue exactly that.

RPGPundit

Quote from: John MorrowActually, I think the US did an effective job of withdrawing from South Vietnam and leaving the Vietnamese in control, exactly like we need to in Iraq.  What cut the South Vietnamese off at the knees was a post-Watergate pro-North Vietnamese Democrat-controlled Congress that cut off the support we were giving the South Vietnamese which was allowing them to hold the North off.  

Hey, look,  if the U.S. were to pull out its military forces from Iraq, and then proceed to give even say, half of the billions and billions its spending on the war effort to the Iraqi government in support (including for the Iraqi military), I would fucking cheer them. It really would be "mission accomplished" then.
Of course IF, and only IF, all that funding was absolutely conditional to the Iraqi government being Democratically elected, and not am American puppet regime Dictatorship of the sort Saddam Hussein's once was.

RPGPundit

Quote from: droogI'm thinking a kind of alt-history thing, where after Obama takes over the black population of the States rises up (with the Hispanics) and reduces the whites to servitude. Small bands of free white men will strike back in guerilla missions against the coloured overlords.

Awesome!

But wait a minute... the Jews get to be part of the ruling class, right? I mean, it was probably our conspiracy anyway!

Quote from: RPGPunditDude, claiming I'm exclusively attacking U.S. policy, and then using the French as a counterexample, when only a handful of posts earlier I'd explicitly laid blame on the French for the entire situation that led to Vietnam... seems pretty self-defeating, doesn't it?

This is what I mean by a "productive discussion", Morrow. One where you set aside your indignation that someone's criticised your country, and actually read what they say thoroughly enough to notice that they're talking about something else.

When people aren't listening to what the other person is saying, the discussion isn't productive.

And Morrow, when it comes to political affairs, you just don't listen to what other people are saying. Which is funny, since a person would expect that with a line-by-line refutation style of argument that nothing would be missed, but there you go.

Quote from: RPGPunditRemember that in the hearts of many American Conservatives, Iraq was seen as the opportunity to get a "do-over" on the humiliating "defeat" that they feel was Vietnam.

Hehe. Woops. What's that line about history repeating, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce?

Quote from: RPGPunditTo have to pull out of Iraq too is so unthinkable to them because that would mean that all their little conspiracy theories about why they lost in Vietnam are so much bullshit, and they'd now have TWO fuckups on their backs.

I first knew for sure that the West was defeated in Iraq when some retired US Generals started saying the government had fucked up. And you run across the occasional ex-Marine saying "we could win, but we had to fight with one hand tied behind our backs!" Same shit as every time a country's losing a war - the politicians blame the military, the military blames the politicians. When blame starts flying around you know they've lost.

Ten years from now when Iraq is like Lebanon 1986, Morrow will be saying it was our fault for doubting him

Quote from: Kyle AaronAwesome!

But wait a minute... the Jews get to be part of the ruling class, right? I mean, it was probably our conspiracy anyway!

Get with the program. The Jew is using the Black Man as muscle. Well, what you gonna do about it "Whitey"?!?!

Bill

Quote from: RPGPunditJesus Christ, so we have to destroy democracy in order to save it?! That's your argument?

Not destroy democracy.  More a matter of suspending it and restarting it later.  There is no perfect system of government guaranteed not to spin wildly out of control.  Representative democracies seem to be the best solution but there are certainly examples of them going terribly wrong.  I don't see democracy as an end but a means toward an end, and if people are democratically jumping off of a cliff, stopping them can be warranted.

Quote from: RPGPunditI mean shit, you really don't have a leg to stand on here, Morrow. The moment you overturn a democratic election, whatever you think might be your motives, whatever you've done has not been in support of democracy.

I don't believe that democracy is magically perfect, so I don't agree.  When I took my defensive driving course in high school, there was a part about where they talked about if an accident is unavoidable that it's preferable to hit an object that will give (a parked car) over an object that won't (a bolder), an object moving in the same direction you are (swerving into the car next to you traveling in the same direction) over an object moving in the opposite direction (a head-on collision) and so on.  

Similarly, if the failure of democracy to sustain itself is inevitable, it's better to put it into the hands of a person who actually loves their country and cares for the majority of the people, keep the country relatively prosperous, and might restore democracy down the road somewhere than to let it fall into hands of people like Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, or the Khmer Rouge that are going to do even worse things to their opponents, run their country into the ground, and hold on to power until they die making the restoration of democracy highly unlikely.  

And please don't tell me that democracies don't ever crash and burn like that because they most certainly do.  Please don't tell me that certain political ideologies, once elected, don't have a long history of subverting and perverting democracy to stay in power because they do.  And please don't tell me that all dictators are equally bad for democracy because while some tenaciously hold on to power until it is pried from their cold dead fingers, others do in fact surrender power and restore democracy, thus for all of his flaws, Pinochet handed over power while for all of his flaws, Castro only did when his health failed and then chose his brother.  They are not all equal but you curiously seem more offended and upset by the dictators of countries who have actually be restored to democracy than by dictators who haven't.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou can't have democracy without the will of the people: in some theoretical country's case, if the majority of the people actually supported an anti-democratic movement, then I would argue that at that time its not only unethical to try to oppose their position but utterly untenable to attempt to impose democracy by force.

Yes, but in the case of Allende, he wasn't elected by the majority of the people.  He was elected with less than 40% of the vote, a fact you always conveniently ignore.  He won a plurality of the vote but was not backed by a majority of the people, which is why Pinochet was hardly the only opposition or coup that he faced.

Quote from: RPGPunditNever mind that in Chile's case there was absolutely no substantial indication that Allende was going to subvert the democratic process.

He already was subverting the rule of law, and you should know that.  No, Castro's month-long visit to Chile, his close ties with Cuba, his increasingly strong and illegal attempts to establish state control over private property and the economy, the soaring inflation and debt, his unconstitutional actions, he attempts to restrict free speech and disregard of the courts, and so on all meant nothing.  Perhaps he was simply an incompetent fool and the Soviets were disappointed by his unwillingness to use force to solidify power, but his actions followed a pattern that generally led to a loss of democracy in the past.  Allende certainly rattled enough cages in Chile that Pinochet was not the first to attempt to depose him and wouldn't have been the last.

Quote from: RPGPunditI think that tells us a lot about the fantasyland you live in.

No.  It simply means that I don't use Bill Maher and John Stewart as my primary sources of how things are going in Iraq, people with a vested interest in making sure that the US fails in Iraq.

Quote from: RPGPunditCertainly there might be minority groups or regions within Iraq that support the occupation out of fear of the alternative, and with a solid basis for that fear.  But that has more to do with a whole other kettle of fish: the reality that Iraq is probably unviable as a state and needs to be partitioned.  Certainly Kurdistan (which has been operating more or less autonomously since the time of the first gulf war) has no business being a part of the rest of Iraq, and a strong argument could be made for a continued U.S. presence there, based on (the very credible probability of) ongoing desire on the part of the Kurdish government and people for U.S. protection and support.

I think that a Kurdistan that incorporated not only Kurdish Iraq but Kurdish Iran and Kurdish Turkey is the proper solution but neither Turkey (a NATO ally) nor Iran are going to go along with that and the fear is that an independent Kurdistan would back insurgencies in Iran and Turkey creating regional instability.

Quote from: RPGPunditOnly its been 5 years in Iraq now and things are just about as utterly fucked up as they've ever been there. No real progress has been made because there was never any real, substantial and intelligent plan for creating a viable state (or set of states) out of the ruins of a post-war Iraq; the whole plan for the start was for a long term occupation with a puppet government and selling off every last Iraqi resource to American corporations.

I don't disagree that years were wasted mismanaging things in Iraq.  George W. Bush has a 20-something percent approval rating because even most conservatives don't approve of how he handled Iraq.  One of the biggest mistakes was to trust crooked exiles with an interest in taking control.  That said, I think there is recent evidence that real progress is being made and that things are starting to stabilize.  Fatalities are definitely down all around.   I think this is the wrong time to be cutting that off at the knees and providing encouragement to those who want to destabilize and destroy the country.

Quote from: RPGPunditNeocons love the comparison to post-war Germany or Japan, but conveniently ignore the key differences in how rebuilding in those countries was actually designed to rebuild things, and the huge differences in how the U.S. invested in the creation of strong autonomous and democratic states in those countries.

Yes, and part of the mistakes that the Bush Administration made was ignoring those differences and having too much faith in that analogy.  That does not, however, mean that there aren't similarities and if a nearly best-case scenario took 5 years to sort out, it's not unreasonable to think that Iraq may take several years long to sort out and that we shouldn't be looking at our watch like the impatient George H. W. Bush during his debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

Quote from: Kyle AaronAnd Morrow, when it comes to political affairs, you just don't listen to what other people are saying. Which is funny, since a person would expect that with a line-by-line refutation style of argument that nothing would be missed, but there you go.

Westerners doing business in Japan have often been misled by the Japanese saying "I understand" and the Westerners interpret that to mean "I agree".  There is this strange assumption in the West that to understand someone is to agree with them, leading to the idea that any crisis or dispute can be solved by getting everyone to sit around a table to understand each other because, of course, if they understand each other, they'll magically agree.  But as the Japanese can tell you, it's quite possible to hear what someone is saying and understand what they are saying and to not agree with what they are saying.

And there are other cases where I really don't understand what someone is saying because I don't share the same assumptions or simply don't understand the point they are making.  And just as people here readily assume that I approve of everything the Bush Administration does and that America does despite the fact that I've often acknowledged mistakes and disagreements because the preponderance of what I write is in defense of the United States and conservative policies, you'll have to excuse me if I overlook the occasional jab that RPGPundit and others make at France when the preponderance of their finger pointing and blame seems to be directed solely at the United States.

Quote from: Kyle AaronTen years from now when Iraq is like Lebanon 1986, Morrow will be saying it was our fault for doubting him

And if ten years from now Iraq isn't like Lebanon in 1986, what's your stance going to be?

Quote from: RPGPunditHey, look,  if the U.S. were to pull out its military forces from Iraq, and then proceed to give even say, half of the billions and billions its spending on the war effort to the Iraqi government in support (including for the Iraqi military), I would fucking cheer them. It really would be "mission accomplished" then.
Of course IF, and only IF, all that funding was absolutely conditional to the Iraqi government being Democratically elected, and not am American puppet regime Dictatorship of the sort Saddam Hussein's once was.

I would be very happy with that outcome but I think it will take a few more years before Iraq is stabilized enough for the United States to withdraw and for their to be a reasonable chance that the Iraqi government could remain democratically elected.  The United States is not the only player in the region with designs on putting a puppet in control of Iraq.

Quote from: RPGPunditPlease.  Before the US invasion, there was no significant Al Qaeda presence in Iraq, and Iran was probably the only country Hussein hated more than the U.S.

Then why did over 100 Iraqi planes fly to Iran during the 1991 Gulf War?

Quote from: RPGPunditAgain, though, those are only real possibilities, either of them, because of the US invasion in the first place.  So your basic argument here is: "we have to stay in Iraq for a hundred years because we fucked up so badly that if we leave now, Iraq will quickly join our enemies".  That's a sterling moral highground you've got going, there.

Yes, my point is that we messed up Iraq so it's our responsibility to fix it.  You break it, you fix it.  And the problem is not that Iraq will join our enemies but that Iraq will become a puppet of other regional powers at the expense of many Iraqis.  You have a problem with the Americans installing a puppet government and abusing Iraq but not others.  That's a sterling moral highground that you've got going there, too.

Quote from: RPGPunditAgain, that's only by virtue of the fact that the current administration is so utterly incompetent that they can't even manage to succeed in their own crapulent motives.  The whole neocon plan was that "the oil will pay for the war". The fact that they failed to make it profitable doesn't annul the real motivations for it in the first place.

Or maybe that was never their motive and they actually believe that Saddam had WMDs because, well, he certainly acted like he did and everyone else seemed to believe he did.  And what was Tony Blair's profit supposed to be in all of this?  Why did he go along with it?

Quote from: RPGPunditHe lost the referendum and ended up having to accept it (albeit reluctantly according to some sources).

He lost a referendum but he hasn't yet been kicked out of office.  The real test is how he behaves when he's actually kicked out of power or forced to leave for legal reasons.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe fact is that WHEN someone subverts democracy (as in the case of Mugabe), then you have a justification of some kind for foreign powers to intervene, though again it must depend on the will of the native population to overcome it.

Democracy was already subverted in Iraq unless you believe people willingly gave Saddam 100% of the vote.  In fact, he represented an ethnic minority that used brutality and terror, including the use of poison case and ecological destruction, to subjugate his opposition in the majority.  And several of those minorities including the Kurds did welcome US intervention.  Attempts at a softer hand that continued for over a decade in the form of "no-fly zones" failed to bring about any real change in rules.  Yeah, maybe the Bush Administration was being foolishly idealistic about being welcomed in to Iraq but the idea of sanctions and no-fly zones bringing about a regime change have proven equally foolishly idealistic in Iraq and elsewhere.

Quote from: RPGPunditBut the idea that the United States should seek to subvert a standing democracy based on the possibility that the government in power might end up doing it anyways, or worse, that they will simply enact policies not to the United States' liking, is utterly unjustifiable.

At this point in time, I agree with you.  During the Cold War, when waiting until things get bad to intervene could lead to a full-blown proxy war between the US and Soviet Union or China, I don't think it was so clear.

Quote from: RPGPunditIt makes a pretty fucking huge difference in how you act after the war is over as an occupying power. [...]

The United States made a lot of mistakes throughout the occupation of the war and I can add a few that you missed.  I don't disagree with that.  The way to fix those mistakes is not to pack up our bags, pat them on the back, and go.  The mistakes are finally being corrected and progress is being made.

Quote from: RPGPunditIn both Chile and El Salvador's case, democracy was restored as a result of local popular will mixed with the incompetence of the governing regime making the ongoing state of the regime untenable. That, plus the fact that the US administration then in power no longer propped up the dictatorship.

While I don't think your characterization is entirely accurate, the key question is why did the US stop propping up the dictatorships and why did that lead to democracy rather than increasingly desperate attempts to keep power, which is the other way those things can go?

Quote from: RPGPunditTo suggest that it was somehow the plan all along to restore democracy in those and other south american countries, when the US through Plan Condor systematically overthrew pretty well every democratic country and plunged the entire continent into a roughly decade-long dark age of dictatorships from coast to coast is just patently absurd revisionism.

It's interesting that you blame the US alone for Condor as if the leaders of various Latin American nations didn't play the primary role in organizing it and carrying it out.  What democratic country did Condor overthrow and who was responsible?

Quote from: RPGPunditThe problem is that you propose no solution that would show an eventual restoration of truly independent democracy in Iraq apart from the apparent plan of "keep occupying the fuck out of them until the stupid bastards magically start to like us". That's not a solution.

The plan is to restore order and the rule of law and make the Iraqis feel safe.  That involves not only running around killing the bad guys (what they were originally doing) but sticking around to make sure they don't return and the people are safe.  That's actually working, contrary to your assertion that nothing is getting better and I think it should be allowed to work until things are more stable.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou like to talk about the excluded middle: it seems to me that this is the whole deal with the Neocons: Having a withdrawl plan is admitting defeat so the only alternative MUST be to continue with things exactly as they are and plan to maintain a semi-permanent occupation there for an unlimited time. That's not an answer, that's the stupidity of bashing your head against the same wall over and over again.

Similarly, the left only wants to see Iraq in terms of defeat and seem Hell-bent on making sure it's a defeat, just like they did with Vietnam.  Why else would people be so eager to call it a failure and leave?  Because to have any success in Iraq would mean that it was the anti-war left who was wrong.  So please don't tell me that only the dreaded neo-cons have a vested political interest in how this turns out.

Quote from: Kyle AaronBut wait a minute... the Jews get to be part of the ruling class, right? I mean, it was probably our conspiracy anyway!

You haven't taken a close look at Obama's foreign policy advisors or why Joe Lieberman is backing McCain, have you?

(Yes, I realize that it's perfectly understandable for an Australian to not know every nuance of the American Presidential election.)

Quote from: John MorrowYes, my point is that we messed up Iraq so it's our responsibility to fix it.  You break it, you fix it.  And the problem is not that Iraq will join our enemies but that Iraq will become a puppet of other regional powers at the expense of many Iraqis.  You have a problem with the Americans installing a puppet government and abusing Iraq but not others.  That's a sterling moral highground that you've got going there, too.

So you're saying "its ok to do it because Iran does"? Well, I guess that explains the support for torture and such...
To me, the difference lies in that I expect more from the U.S., I expect the U.S. to do better than Syria or Iran.

QuoteAnd what was Tony Blair's profit supposed to be in all of this?  Why did he go along with it?

Blair wanted to be a relevant big-time mover and shaker in the world diplomatic scene, that was always what got his rocks off. He believed that if he stuck unequivocably in support of Bush, he would get to be the prestigious and respectable "middleman", negotiating between the U.S. and the rest of Europe, and people would think him deeply significant by virtue of being the "elder statesman" able to influence Bush's government and temper some of the American Neocon's excesses.
When it became blatantly obvious to everyone that Blair was nothing of the sort, that Dubya didn't give a fuck what Tony thought, and would not be influenced by anyone, it was already far too late for Blair to take any other direction. He thought he'd have leverage, and didn't realize that he'd been made into a tool and a token until it was too late (and would have been political suicide for him personally to change direction; so like a good coward he chose to quite possibly destroy his party for a generation rather than accept that he'd made the wrong call and "take one for the team").

QuoteHe lost a referendum but he hasn't yet been kicked out of office.  The real test is how he behaves when he's actually kicked out of power or forced to leave for legal reasons.

Sure. Until then Venezuela is still a democracy. Are you advocating the overthrow of its government too now?

QuoteDemocracy was already subverted in Iraq unless you believe people willingly gave Saddam 100% of the vote.  In fact, he represented an ethnic minority that used brutality and terror, including the use of poison case and ecological destruction, to subjugate his opposition in the majority.  And several of those minorities including the Kurds did welcome US intervention.  Attempts at a softer hand that continued for over a decade in the form of "no-fly zones" failed to bring about any real change in rules.  Yeah, maybe the Bush Administration was being foolishly idealistic about being welcomed in to Iraq but the idea of sanctions and no-fly zones bringing about a regime change have proven equally foolishly idealistic in Iraq and elsewhere.

Sure. The right way to have fixed this would have been to provide funding and assistance to Iraqi anti-Saddam resistance movements after Gulf War I; but the U.S. government chose to let them all be slaughtered by Saddam instead, because they felt that it was the best for them to maintain the status quo at that time. Another bad call.

You want to know what WAS a really good example of U.S. intervention? Afghanistan.  After 9-11, the U.S. provided aid and support to the embattled Northern Alliance army that had been fighting a war (until then, losing badly) against the Taliban.  With that support, the Northern Alliance swept in and basically decimated the Taliban, having effectively won the war before the  foreign troops even arrived en masse. There was nothing at all wrong with that.  Unfortunately, things have been getting progressively worse in Afghanistan too now, mostly because the U.S. ended up getting totally sidelined by Iraq, instead of fighting the enemies who were actually responsible for 9-11 and a real international menace.

QuoteWhile I don't think your characterization is entirely accurate, the key question is why did the US stop propping up the dictatorships and why did that lead to democracy rather than increasingly desperate attempts to keep power, which is the other way those things can go?

I would think the key question is why did they support those dictators for a decade or more before then?

QuoteIt's interesting that you blame the US alone for Condor as if the leaders of various Latin American nations didn't play the primary role in organizing it and carrying it out.

Of course there were factions in latinamerican states who took advantage of the opportunities to grab power offered by Condor.

QuoteSimilarly, the left only wants to see Iraq in terms of defeat and seem Hell-bent on making sure it's a defeat, just like they did with Vietnam.  Why else would people be so eager to call it a failure and leave?  

Maybe because it has been a miserable failure?

QuoteSo please don't tell me that only the dreaded neo-cons have a vested political interest in how this turns out.

I think, more accurately, there are a number of guilty college liberals who think that everything the U.S. ever does is wrong; and a few superannuated hippies who are reliving vietnam just as much as the conservatives are trying to "avenge" it.

RPGPundit

Quote from: John MorrowYou haven't taken a close look at Obama's foreign policy advisors or why Joe Lieberman is backing McCain, have you?

Apart from the fact that a solid democratic victory would render Lieberman utterly irrelevant and destroy his whole "i'm a quasi-republican" gimmick?

RPGPundit

Quote from: John MorrowWesterners doing business in Japan have often been misled by the Japanese saying "I understand" and the Westerners interpret that to mean "I agree".

Don't give us this bullshit, Morrow.

Someone wrote something, and you ignored it, because you're not interested in a discussion, you don't respond to what people say, you've just got this and that you want to say, there's stuff you're indignant about, and you want to talk about that - other people's words are just boards to jump off into your own pool of words. Get a blog.

Quote from: John MorrowAnd if ten years from now Iraq isn't like Lebanon in 1986, what's your stance going to be?

My stance will be one of surprise, and thanking God.

But we'll see. Before the invasion I predicted there'd be no WMD, lies of government would be exposed but not lose them government, Iraq would be a mess for years, where I messed up is that I expected involvement of neighbours - Kurds and Turks and Iranians. Instead it's more about the various factions. So it's worse for the Iraqis than I thought it'd be, but better for their neighbours since they've had the good sense to stay out of it. The conflict's deeper rather than broader than I expected.

My predictions have been not bad, better than those of self-described "conservatives". So I'm inclined to think my predictions will be better than yours in the future, too. But we'll see.

If Iraq turns out in ten years to be a paragon of democracy and peace in the world, I'll be joyous. But I ain't gonna hold my breath.